Abstract

In this study, we present a system of descriptions of family-demographic behavior in developed countries. We use life-table techniques in order to describe the experience of men, of women, and of children in processes related to family formation and family dissolution.
We develop a large number of descriptive measures, and apply them to survey data from Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, the USA, Austria, Germany (East and West Germany separately), Flanders, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, in order to describe patterns in the family-demographic behavior during the late 1980s - early 1990s. We use Sweden and Hungary as examples when presenting the outline of our system of tabulations and provide results for the whole set of countries in an Appendix to the paper.